'Tea Party Coloring Book' is kiddie propaganda art

From LA Times

As kids, lots of people had their first participatory art experience with coloring books. Simplified contour drawings in thick black lines leave blank spaces to be filled in with crayons or colored pencils.
 
Now, just in time for the November election, a small Midwest publisher has come up with a distinctive hybrid: a coloring book merged with kiddie propaganda.

"The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids" is a 32-page "special edition" on the right-wing political movement, produced by a division of Really Big Coloring Books Inc. The online imprint of the St. Louis-based publisher produces one other special-edition product: a 2008 coloring book on then President-elect Barack Obama.

Cheerful in tone, semi-literate in its writing and factually challenged, "The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids" offers itself as "a teaching and learning tool" for children ages 2 and up.

There aren't any drawings of tea bags suspended from sun hats, nor racist depictions of Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose. Instead, puzzles, lyrics to patriotic songs and line drawings of the Statue of Liberty, edifices in Washington and the facade of the New York Stock Exchange are interspersed with free-market-obsessed texts.

Next to a big dollar sign, "Freedom of Choice and Economics" extols the "ability to choose your job in America's free market." Bright-eyed teen doctors flank "Good Health Care for All Americans," which means private medicine "not restricted by federal or state governments." "No more taxes!" is largely self-explanatory, a sentiment floating in the clouds above Mt. Rushmore.